Chapter 44: Happy Anniversary

December 15, 1990, Chicago, Illinois

“Happy fifth anniversary!” I said when Jessica, Kara, and I woke up on Saturday morning.

“I can’t believe it’s been five years!” Jessica said.

“I know, right?” I chuckled. “It seems like twenty, at least!”

Both girls shrieked and immediately started hitting me with their pillows. I held my arms over my face and laughed until they finally gave up.

“You can be such a MAN at times!” Kara said, though she was laughing.

“And you say that it’s easy to get ME worked up!”

“Oh, it is, Tiger!” Jessica smirked.

“Speak for yourself!” I retorted.

“We should probably get out of bed,” Kara said. “It’s going to be a very busy day!”

“I’ll say!” Jessica agreed. “In fact, we need to get downstairs because Jesse and Matthew are making breakfast for us!”

“I hope they have help from Abbie!” I said with a grin.

We got out of bed and put on our pyjamas and robes, and went down to the kitchen.

“I thought we’d have to come throw a bucket of cold water on the three of you!” Abbie teased.

“Dad?” Jesse inquired. “No kissing?”

“Not this morning! You’re making breakfast for us!”

“Yes! Abbie and Matthew helped. Bacon, eggs, waffles, and juice!”

“I not help,” Birgit said, sounding sad.

“It’s OK, Pumpkin,” I said, picking her up. “The boys wanted to do this. You can give me a kiss!”

She giggled and kissed me on the left cheek, then on the right. I kissed her on the forehead.

“Love Dada!” she declared.

“Where are Stephie, Albert, and Michael?” I asked.

“With Elyse in the sunroom,” Abbie said. “They’ll eat with the kids and me after you eat your special breakfast.”

My wives and I sat down at the table and the boys, with quite a bit of help from Abbie, got the food onto the table, and then Abbie poured tea for us.

“Happy Anniversary!” Jesse said.

“Yes!” Matthew agreed.

“Love Dada!” Birgit said happily, then pouted when I handed her to Abbie.

“Come on, kids,” Abbie said. “Let’s go play while they eat!”

“Thank you for making breakfast, boys!” I said. “And thank you all for loving us!”

“This was really sweet, kids!” Jessica added.

“I love you all!” Kara said.

The kids reluctantly followed Abbie out of the kitchen, and my wives and I ate our breakfast. When we finished, we went upstairs to shower and dress. We never made it to the shower, as my wives attacked me, forced me onto the bed, and fucked me within a millimeter of my life. I returned the favor, once for each of them, and then we finally made it to the shower.

“Are you going to tell Jesse we kissed?” Kara teased.

“Jesse KNOWS we kissed!” I declared. “I don’t think there was any doubt in anyone’s mind, least of all his!”

“Karate should be interesting this morning,” Jessica laughed. “We’re sparring!”

“Ugh,” Kara said. “I think we’re all in real trouble!”

“Speak for yourselves!” I retorted. “I’m going to be just fine!”

“We’re losing our touch, Jess!” Kara complained.

“It’s those damned five-mile runs every morning!” Jessica complained.

As I predicted, I didn’t have an issue sparring, but both my wives were a bit slow and sloppy, earning them gentle reprimands from Sensei Jim. When the class finished, we headed home, had another shower, and then joined all of our kids, Elyse, Abbie, Jennifer, and Josie, for lunch.

“What time are Kurt and Kathy going to be here?” Jennifer asked.

“Around 5:00pm,” I said.

“We’ll serve dinner at 6:00pm,” Elyse said. “Abbie, Jesse, and I are cooking.”

“Want to help!” Birgit protested.

“You may,” Elyse agreed.

Jesse made a sour face, but a hard look from Jennifer was enough to keep him from saying anything.

“This is going to be fun when Stephie, Albert, and the new baby are old enough to want to participate,” Kara said quietly.

“No kidding,” I said with a grin. “But it’s healthy competition!”

“I have an anniversary present for you,” Jennifer said.

“Aren’t we saving those for later?” Jessica asked.

“This is actually for Steve. If he wants to make his trip, it’s OK to take his traveling companion.”

“Russia! Yes!” Jesse squealed.

“How the FUCK did he find out?” Josie asked, obviously annoyed.

Jesse had a silly smile on his face, “I listened to Mom One talk to Dad!”

The little turkey had to have listened at the door to my study when I was talking to Jennifer. I was surprised he’d managed to keep it to himself for a week. Jennifer hadn’t been sure at first, but after a talk with Josie, and then one with Jessica and Kara, they’d apparently all agreed that if I wanted to go to Russia in the Spring, that would be OK to take Jesse. I HAD planned to call Vanya and Dima before I told Jesse, but the cat was clearly out of the bag at this point.

“I still need to talk to Dima and Vanya, Jesse. We don’t know what’s going to happen in Russia, so it might not happen.”

“Will you stop in Stockholm on your way?” Kara asked.

“I was thinking about that. It would be totally cool if, in addition to Kristian and Karin, I could see Katt and Mikael, Torbjörn, and Tina, but that would take some serious coördination to pull off.”

“Then get started!” Jessica said.

“Call Barney first thing on Monday,” Elyse said. “He’ll give you all your options, and then you can speak to your friends in Sweden and Russia.”

“Kara and Jessica aren’t going?” Abbie asked.

“I can’t really take enough time off to make it worthwhile,” Jessica said. “And I’ll be four months pregnant!”

“What?!” Jennifer exclaimed.

“I missed my period earlier this week, and my EPT was positive! I’m due sometime late in August, it would seem.”

“Congratulations!” Jennifer said.

Elyse and Abbie added their congratulations.

“ANOTHER baby?” Jesse said. “It better be a boy!”

“We have four boys and two girls,” I said. “Even if it’s a girl, there will be four boys and three girls.”

“I have ENOUGH sisters!” he protested.

“I want a sister!” Birgit said quite insistently.

“And so the next World War begins!” Elyse laughed.

We finished our lunch, then played with the kids for the afternoon until Kathy and Kurt arrived with Kristin. I shook my head when Kristin gave Jesse a sloppy kiss on the lips. He smiled smugly when she went to hug Birgit and Stephie.

“He’s his father’s son, for sure,” Kathy laughed as we hugged and exchanged a quick kiss.

I shook hands with Kurt, and we all went into the sunroom to hang out until dinner.

“I’m really glad you guys are joining us in the five-year club,” Kathy said.

“It was touch-and-go for a bit,” I agreed.

“It was way worse than that, Tiger, and you know it!” Jessica said.

“We’re together. That’s all that matters.”

“I agree!” Kara said.

“Kathy,” I asked, “is everything set for your trip to Ohio on Tuesday?”

“Yes. Fortunately, the 18th is our last day of school; otherwise, I’d have needed to get a substitute.”

“We’re all glad you’re going,” Kara said.

“Did Bethany talk to you about coming up for a few days after Christmas?” Kathy asked.

“No, but she’s obviously welcome here. Do you know what her plans are?”

“To come up on the 28th and then go home on the 2nd. She wants to come to your New Year’s party, and I’m sure that Jesse will be happy to have Nicholas visit.”

“Yes!” Jesse said. “He’s my friend!”

“Hi, Big Brother,” my sister said, coming into the room with Ed. “Happy Anniversary!”

“Thanks, Squirt!”

Jesse left to go to the kitchen, taking Birgit with him. He came back just under an hour later to tell us that Abbie said dinner was ready. We all followed him to the dining room and sat down to eat a wonderful meal of lemon chicken, broccoli, rice pilaf, and a tossed salad. When we finished, Abbie and Elyse brought out cake and ice cream and then served coffee and tea.

“That was a fantastic meal!” Kurt said as he sipped his coffee.

“You’re welcome!” Elyse said. “Let us clear everything away, and then we’ll all go to the sauna!”

“What about presents?” Jesse asked. “I have a present for Dad, Aunt Chess, and Aunt Kara!”

We’d specifically asked for no presents, but I wasn’t surprised that Jesse had one. It was just his way.

“You can give it to them now,” Jennifer said.

He got up and left the room and was back a minute later with a wrapped present. I pointed to Jessica and Kara, and he gave it to them. They jointly unwrapped it and held up a professional photo of all the kids.

“Thank you, Jesse!” I said, with Jessica and Kara adding in their thanks.

“Abbie helped me!”

“That was very nice of her!”

“I have something for you from Jorge,” Abbie said, producing a cardboard tube.

“Is it PG-13?” I chuckled, knowing Jorge.

“Believe it or not, it’s G-rated!” she laughed.

I pulled the cap off the tube and carefully extracted an amazing pencil drawing of Jessica, Kara, and me. I was in the center and had my arms around the girls.

“That’s cool!” Elyse said when I held it up for everyone to see.

“He did a great job of capturing all three of your likenesses,” Kurt observed. “He really is talented.”

“He’s done some R-rated stuff that’s really quite good,” I said.

I knew he’d done a very tasteful nude of my sister, but I couldn’t say anything because I had no idea if she’d told Ed about it.

“With all the girls that have come and gone from this house, I bet he has a spectacular portfolio!” Kathy laughed.

“I’ve seen his drawing of you,” I chuckled. “It’s just too bad he doesn’t do watercolors!”

Kurt winked at me. He had that drawing, and it was in a frame in their bedroom. It was an amazing drawing of Kathy reclined on the couch, and it would have given a dead man an erection. I smiled back as we got up from the table and went to the basement. Five minutes later, we were sitting in the steam, thanks to Elyse pre-heating the sauna for us.

“Jen, do you mind if we take Jesse to church tomorrow?” I asked.

“Does it matter?” she laughed. “Jesse wants to go.”

“Yes!” Jesse exclaimed. “I like church!”

“This isn’t a serious undertaking?” Kurt asked.

“I’m not exactly sure how to answer that. It seems to fill a spiritual need for all of us,” I answered. “Obviously, choices I’ve made in my life make it very difficult to actually join a church, and, to be honest, I’m still not sure what I believe, if anything.”

“Your shared vision with Bethany really affected you, didn’t it?” Kathy asked.

I smiled, “I’m not surprised she told you about that. I had three visions like that before she had hers, but they line up exactly. And that made even Bethany rethink her adamant denial of an afterlife or power greater than ourselves.”

“She was pretty hardcore on that, and I think if it hadn’t been for the accident, Nick’s death would have confirmed for her that no benevolent being rules this universe in any way, shape, or form.”

“Kathy, you went to church when you were younger,” I said. “Christianity teaches that Satan is in charge of the world. Granted, that can be used as a cop-out or a way of excusing God for the bad things that happen, but it does match, at least in a loose kind of way, the dualism of Zoroastrianism and the concept of Shiva in Hinduism. I guess my experience with Orthodox Christianity has shown me more parallels with other ancient faiths than I’d seen growing up Roman Catholic and living around Protestants. And I don’t just mean of the fundamentalist ilk like the church Kara went to. You went to the Methodist Church in Milford, for example.”

“I guess it didn’t take, so to speak,” Kathy said. “I’m nominally Christian, but I wouldn’t call myself religious. I suppose God exists, and I suppose Jesus is the Son of God. But what that means, I don’t really have a clue.”

“And heaven?” Ed asked.

He and Stephanie had joined us because his sister wasn’t around, and he knew Stephanie, and I didn’t have any issues in that regard.

“I suppose there is something after death, but I don’t know what it is. But the last thing I want to think about on your anniversary is death and what comes after! Did you guys celebrate this morning?”

“Yes!” Jesse laughed. “They kissed! Lots! After breakfast!”

Everyone laughed.

“And how do you know THAT, Jesse?” Kathy asked.

“They said they didn’t kiss before breakfast! Me and Matthew made breakfast for them and after breakfast, they went to their room. They were there a long time!”

Everyone laughed again.

“You should say, ‘Matthew and I made breakfast’,” Kathy corrected in a voice I could only assume was her ‘schoolmarm’ voice.

He rolled his eyes at her just as he did for me when I did the same thing.

“He’s not even five, and he has the teenage eye roll perfected,” Kathy laughed.

“He’s his father’s son, that’s for sure!” Josie agreed, laughing as well. “I can imagine Steve doing that to his mom from everything I’ve heard.”

“I gave up on rolling my eyes when she could see pretty early on because it only made her abuse worse.”

“And it was bad to start with,” my sister confirmed.

That was true, and my concerns about Stephanie in that regard had waned. Ed was having a very good effect on her. He’d drawn some very clear lines and required her to toe the line in quite a few areas. She’d always chafed under that kind of control by her boyfriends until now. I was sure that the weight of events of the previous two years had finally sunk in, and she’d decided that she had to change. And that was a good thing.

“She’s fairly tame at this point,” I said. “Thanks to the kids’ moms.”

“And speaking of kids, I need to take your Pumpkin and Stephie out,” Kara said.

“I’ll do it, Kara,” Abbie said. “You stay with Steve. Are the others staying?”

“Another five minutes for my boys, I think,” Elyse said. “I’ll send them out.”

“Kristin can stay until then, too,” Kathy added.

“Jesse will go when Kristin goes,” Jennifer said.

The expected reaction came immediately.

“I want to stay with the grown-ups!” Jesse demanded.

“You’ll go with your siblings and Kristin,” Jennifer said firmly. “Or no Nintendo.”

“Hmph!” Jesse complained.

“Jesse Stephen!” I said firmly. “You do NOT act like that when one of your moms tells you what to do.”

He glared at me but didn’t say anything.

Abbie took the little kids with her, and five minutes later, we sent the rest of the kids out, with Jesse glaring at his mom.

“He’s a real stinker,” Kathy laughed after they were gone.

“Don’t I know it!” Jennifer agreed. “He’s four going on forty! He reads, he converses like an adult, and he can count to one hundred.”

“His grammar could use some work,” Kathy noted.

“Sadly, that’s true for a LOT of people,” I said. “Do you know how often I hear something like ‘Billy and me went to the store’? I think the issue is that ‘I’ just doesn’t flow naturally after another word. If you think about it, ‘I’ comes first, except in cases like that one. It’s like the problem of no difference between the singular and plural ‘you’, which leads to all kinds of things — ‘you all’ and its variants such as ‘youse guys’, that kind of thing.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” Kurt teased.

“Kurt!” Kathy exclaimed, exasperated, then added, “He does that when I’m grading papers and complain about lousy grammar. I teach social studies, but there’s a lot of writing, and it’s just horrid, even accounting for them being sixth graders!”

“Well, if all y’all are going to whine about grammar, I’m gonna start talking like Stephie use’ ta!”

“Stop!” my sister said, laughing hard. “It was cute when Stephie did that and OK when Jason did it. You are NOT a hillbilly nor a redneck!”

“Come on, Squirt. You know that Cincinnati has a lot of Southern slang like that. And speaking of Cincinnati slang, all of us have lost our ‘Please?’ for needing someone to repeat themselves. Well, maybe not Ed because he hasn’t been in Chicago long enough to start going ‘Hunh?’ when he doesn’t hear something!”

Kurt laughed, “I remember the first time I was with Kathy, and she said, ‘Please?’ and I asked, ‘Please what?’. She looked at me like I had two heads!”

“You’re from Pittsburgh, right?” Kara asked.

“Yep. Born and raised. I’m a Steelers fan, but not a big baseball fan. And I barely knew we had a hockey team. Before Lemieux, they were pretty much a zero and haven’t done a lot since.”

“They’re hovering around .500 this year. If Lemieux can come back from his injury, he and Jágr, with Barrasso backing them in goal, should put on a real show. If Lemieux does come back, they’ve got a good shot. If not? Then next year.”

“Now you’re sounding like a Cubs fan!” Kurt teased.

“Hey, the Cubs haven’t won since 1908. The Pens have only been playing since 1967! They’d need to go another seventy years to be as hopeless as the Cubs! And honestly, the Pens have the players now.”